Epistemology of the Humanities and Social Sciences

The course deals with a structure of human thinking on multiple levels. We begin with a biological and evolutionary determinations of thought, that is with a theory, according to which thinking is not a passive recording of environmental data, but rather an active process and a part of efficient behaviour of an organism in its environment.
We continue with an analysis of thinking in historical, social and cultural context by using cognitive science theories of extended and embodied mind and understand human thinking and communication as being parts of wider natural and cultural systems.
The semester concludes with an investigation into a connection between thinking and technology in paleo-anthropological (the inseparability of technological development from the evolution of human species) as well as contemporary (today’s thinking as determined by new technologies and new media) perspective, together with a broader account of how is scientific thinking constituted today.